Xbox
The Xbox is a video game console built by Microsoft. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market and competed with the PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, and Nintendo GameCube. The integrated Xbox Live service allowed players to compete online. The Xbox was released on November 15, 2001 in North America; February 22, 2002 in Japan; and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe. The console featured a 32-bit 733 MHz Pentium III-based CPU and 64 MB DDR SDRAM at 200 MHz. The Xbox was the first console to wield a hard disk drive, which as largely used for storing game saves and content downloaded from Xbox Live. This eliminated the need for separate memory cards. The Xbox was also the first gaming product to feature Dolby Interactive Content-Encoding Technology. The Xbox is based on commodity PC hardware and is much larger and heavier than its contemporaries, largely due to a large tray-loading DVD-ROM drive. The console had less than 1000 commercially released games, the most notable games including Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Halo, Halo 2, MechAssault, and Ghost Recon. More than 24 million Xboxes were sold worldwide. Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is the second video second console built by Microsoft and successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii. The Xbox 360 was released on November 22, 2005, in the United States, Mexico and Canada; December 2, 2005, in Europe; and December 10, 2005, in Japan. Various models were released throughout the console's lifetime, such as the Pro, Premium, Arcade, and Elite, with each offering different specs such as hard disk space. Some Xbox games are compatible with the Xbox 360 via an update. The Xbox 360 features a port on the top when vertical to which a custom-housed hard drive unit can be attached in sizes of either 20, 60, 120 or 250 GB. Inside, the Xbox 360 uses the triple-core IBM designed Xenon as its CPU, with each core capable of simultaneously processing two threads, and can therefore operate on up to six threads at once. Graphics processing is handled by the ATI Xenos, which has 10 MB of eDRAM. Its main memory pool is 512 MB in size. A motion controller, titled "Natal", is to be released for the console in the near future. The Metal Gear series on the Xbox Only one game has been released on the Xbox – Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance. The game was released on the Xbox in 2002 shortly before its release on the PlayStation 2 and is the only Metal Gear game playable on the Xbox. Somewhat ironically, Substance is not compatible with the Xbox 360. Metal Gear Solid: Rising, which currently does not have a release date, is set to be released on both the PS3 and Xbox 360, as well as the PC. Rising is thus far the only Metal Gear game announced for the Xbox 360. Metal Gear games on the Xbox * Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance (Xbox, 2002) * Metal Gear Solid: Rising (Xbox 360, TBA) * Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection‎ (Xbox 360, 2011) See also * PlayStation 3 * Consoles External links * Official Xbox website * Official Xbox 360 website Category:Consoles